The invention relates to an apparatus for driving slidable, specifically, rotatable divider elements, as well as to a drive assembly for the drive apparatus, and a divider element driven by the drive apparatus.
Glass or wooden walls, sliding panels, doors, or shutters—hereafter called divider elements—which are immovably mounted or attached so as to move on drive assemblies slidable along a rail, and are optionally rotatably mounted and/or stackable or parkable—are often employed to separate or configure rooms, or to close off room or window openings.
Reference [1], WO 2004/005656, discloses the drive apparatus, illustrated below in FIG. 1 which serves to drive an optionally rotatable or parkable divider element 3 which is slidable linearly and/or in curves, and which is attached to at least two drive assemblies 2000, 2001 moving on a rail 100 and provided with running wheels 211, the first of these drive assemblies 2000 being provided with an electric motor 43 located between the running wheels. The vertical drive shaft of electric motor 43 is connected to a gearing 44 which is connected by flanges 61, 62 to a connector shaft 63 which in turn drives a toothed gear 91 engaging a toothed belt 51. Connector shaft 63 is rotatably supported at its upper end by a first flange 62 in the housing of drive assembly 2000 and at its lower end by a second flange 64 within a coupling piece 33. The solution disclosed in [1] provides a very compact design for the drive assembly provided with the drive motor and gearing.
The disadvantage of this solution, on the other hand, is the fact that a high degree of interdependence between individual elements of the apparatus results from the compact design, this interdependence having the effect that modifications and further developments of the drive assembly entail considerable expense.
Another drive for a sliding door wing guided along a rail and having a compactly designed drive assembly provided with a drive motor is described in [2], EP 1 319 789 A1. The drive motor, which is located on the side facing away from the door wing, that is, above a toothed gear engaging a toothed belt, and the single running wheel are accommodated in the drive assembly that is fixed to the door wing. The drive shaft of the drive motor is provided with a pinion which effectively engages a gear ring which is connected to a center element of the toothed gear, which gear is supported in a rotationally movable manner about its vertical axis of rotation by two bearing rings on a load shaft. The load shaft is supported in a rotationally movable manner about the under-load rotational axis by two spaced bearing rings located above the toothed gear on a drive assembly body of the drive assembly. The under-load rotational axis of the load shaft and the rotational axis of the toothed gear are thus arranged coaxially relative to each other—however, offset relative to the drive shaft of the drive motor. With this drive assembly as well, the arrangement of the load shaft and toothed gear also results in a compact design which, however, means that the toothed gear and the load shaft passing through this gear must be decoupled from each other by bearing rings—again resulting in undesirable interdependencies which figure prominently when examining the arrangement of the drive motor which must be installed very precisely in order to bring about the optimum effective connection between the pinion and the gear ring mounted on the toothed gear. Any changes in the dimensions of the drive assembly body or of the drive motor would most likely result in a relatively high modification expense. In light of the fact that the drive motor already has the design of a gear motor which is normally supplied by a specialized manufacturer, additional gearing elements to be installed in the apparatus by the user of the gear motor should be avoided. This is true especially in light of the fact that additional gearing elements result in relatively high fabrication, assembly and maintenance costs. This last fact is especially relevant since the pinion and gear ring are not integrated in a gearing unit so as to be protected, and the quality standard for the gearing manufacturer is essentially unattainable.